Pod Insights American History Tellers Fan Favorite: Great American Authors | Harper Lee: Mockingbird | 6 About this episode In 1949, aspiring writer Nelle Harper Lee moved from her home in small-town Alabama to New York City. She was following in the footsteps of her childhood friend, author Truman Capote. Within a few years she had penned a novel of her own, and called it To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird catapulted Harper Lee to the heights of literary fame. But just as she found success, she withdrew, overwhelmed by being in the public eye, and the pressure to produce another book as good as her first. Decades would pass before anyone mentioned the possibility of her publishing again - and this time, people wondered how much of a voice she really had in the publication of her second book.
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0:10 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's the spring of 1957. You're an editor at a distinguished literary publishing house in New York and one of the few senior women in the office. You walk into a towering art deco building in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Your shoulder strains under a heavy bag, you're carrying a 250-page manuscript and it's a story that you can't get off your mind. After two decades in the business, you've established yourself as a trusted leader with a strong instinct for story and a talent for working with young writers. As you enter the office, you're greeted by a more junior employee named Marguerite.
0:48 Speaker 01 Good morning. Good morning. I was hoping I would run into you. I want to talk over that manuscript you passed over. The one by that young author from Alabama. Right, go set a watchman. I didn't think it was worth your time to read.
1:05 Lindsay Graham? You're surprised. Marguerite has been working in publishing a few years and you've come to rely on her to vet new writers before they get to your desk. But when you saw this manuscript in the rejection pile, something made you decide to give it a look. You decide to press her on her reasoning.
1:20 Speaker 01 Well, what made you think that? Well, for starters, it's far too long for a first novel. I agree, it's a bit long, but that's what good editors are for. Cutting, honing a focus. All right, but the story was simply too autobiographical. And there's nothing tying all the various narrative arcs together. There's plenty to change about the book, we can agree on that. Right now it reads more like a collection of anecdotes than a cohesive novel. But weren't you struck by the author's distinctive voice? It's hard to believe this 30-year-old writer hasn't published anything before. Not even a short story. I marvelled at the prose and the nuanced depictions of setting.
2:04 Lindsay Graham? Marguerite looks at you sheepishly.
2:06 Speaker 01 I suppose I hadn't noticed all that. And what about the characters? Don't you think there's a reason you felt it was autobiographical? The characters were so three-dimensional, so real. It's as if you and I could be standing in a room with them right now.
2:24 Lindsay Graham? Now Marguerite looks embarrassed. You aren't intending to scold her, you just want her to learn from the experience, so you soften your tone.
2:31 Speaker 01 This manuscript is a perfect candidate for a publishing house like ours. With our help, I think the book could really become something. Let's get this writer to come in for a meeting. All right, I see what you're saying. I'll call her agent now.
2:47 Lindsay Graham? You leave Marguerite and settle in at your desk, feeling a sense of relief that you didn't let her pass this manuscript over. You can't wait to meet this mysterious writer from Alabama. She may be the rare talent you've been looking for.
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3:50 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers: Our History, Your Story.
4:12 Lindsay Graham? In the spring of 1957, an aspiring writer named Nell Harper Lee submitted a manuscript entitled "Go Set a Watchman" to several New York publishers. Editor Tay Ho-Hoff saw the promise hiding within Lee's work. Over the next several months with Ho-Hoff's guidance, Lee would reshape her manuscript into a breakout novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. This book was an instant success and soon ignited a countrywide debate about racial injustice, while giving many Northerners a window into small-town Southern life. A New York Times reviewer said of Lee, "Here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place." At that moment, Lee appeared to be a trailblazing new author at the start of her prolific career.
4:57 Lindsay Graham? But in the years to come, Lee would not publish another book. Soon after Mockingbird, Lee all but disappeared from public life. She stopped doing interviews and even shied away from lifelong friends. Decades later, when an old manuscript of hers suddenly appeared, no one knew what to believe. And a battle over her classic book and her legacy began. This is the story of Harper Lee, who wrote a narrative that ripped a nation, only to lose control of her own. This is the final episode in our six-part series, Great American Authors: Mockingbird.
5:34 Lindsay Graham? Nell Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in April 1926, the youngest of four children. Unlike her older sisters Alice and Louise, Nell quickly developed a reputation for rebellious behavior. She was known to horse around with boys on the playground, climb tall trees, and call her schoolteachers by their first names. In 1930, the town of Monroeville had just over 1,300 residents, an old hotel, and no library. The streets were unpaved, and the only places with plumbing were the jail and the courthouse. It was the era of the Great Depression, and Lee later recalled, "We didn't have much money. We didn't have many toys to play with. So the result was we lived in our imaginations most of the time."
6:17 Lindsay Graham? Lee's mother Frances never quite understood her youngest daughter. She had been raised in a genteel southern home, studying Latin and playing the piano at a girls' finishing school, not getting her pants dirty in tackle football. And during Nell's childhood, her mother began to suffer from what her family called a nervous disorder. Her drastic mood swings brought with them erratic behavior. Her mental illness kept her largely housebound and meant that Nell and her siblings came to primarily rely on their father, Amasa Coleman, or A.C. Lee, for stability.
6:50 Lindsay Graham? A.C. Lee was already in his 50s by the time Nell entered the first grade. A lawyer and part owner of a local newspaper, he was often stoic and introspective in public. But at home, Nell and her siblings found him to be a loving father who encouraged their curiosity. And it was A.C. who gave Nell her first typewriter. Nell shared her prized typewriter with her next-door neighbor, a boy named Truman Streckvus Persons, who would later go by the name Truman Capote. Capote's mother moved him to Monroeville in the summer of 1930 to live with relatives when he was six years old and Lee was five. Even after his mother returned to take him to New York a few years later, he'd spend every summer back in Alabama. So Lee and Capote became close friends
7:35 Lindsay Graham? and could often be found playing jacks or reading Sherlock Holmes books in the treehouse between their family's homes. They also spent many an afternoon huddled around Lee's typewriter, writing stories with a Webster's dictionary in hand. And they would often hang around the local courthouse, too, where they'd sit in the second-floor gallery and watch Lee's father, A.C., argue cases below. A.C.'s southern heritage shaped his views. His father had been a Confederate soldier and was distantly related to General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army. A.C. opposed federal anti-lynching laws and condoned segregation until later in life. But A.C. Lee was vehemently opposed to the way justice was often carried out in places like Monroeville,
8:19 Lindsay Graham? at the hands of vigilante mobs or terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan. As a lawyer, A.C. Lee believed in the power of the law to bring justice. A few years before his daughter Nell was born, he tried his first criminal case, defending two black men accused of murdering a white shop owner. But the deck was stacked against the men before the trial even began. Lee had only two weeks to prepare his defense, and one of the victim's sons was allowed to serve on the jury. The accused men were sentenced to death, and Lee never argued another criminal case.
8:56 Lindsay Graham? But A.C. Lee did encourage his daughter Nell to pursue a career in law and follow in his footsteps as her older sister Alice had, and for a while it seemed Nell might. After a year at a women's college in 1945, Nell transferred to the University of Alabama's law program. There she stood out from her sorority sisters as a short-haired, cigarette-smoking introvert who'd rather play golf by herself than socialize. She wrote for both a student newspaper and humor magazine, and by the time she was a senior, Lee had begun to think it was writing that she'd like to pursue and not the law. Then, just one semester short of her degree, Lee dropped out of college, much to her father's dismay. She saved up some money by waitressing at the Monroeville Golf Club, then packed up
9:40 Lindsay Graham? her bags and moved north to try and make it as a writer, just like her childhood friend Truman Capote. Truman had skipped college and jump-started his career writing for The New Yorker magazine. By the summer of 1949, his first novel had already shot to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Basking in his success, he decided to spend that summer in Morocco, so he wasn't in New York in August of 1949 to welcome Lee when she arrived. So if Lee had dreamed of a seamless Monroeville-to-Manhattan story like Capote's, she was in for a rude awakening. She couldn't get work as a full-time writer, so she took a job in a bookstore, then another as an airline reservation agent.
10:21 Lindsay Graham? It was barely enough to get by, and she soon found herself scavenging for loose change, checking parking meters for discarded coins. She lived off peanut butter sandwiches in a third-floor walk-up apartment without a stove or hot water. Lee spent much of her precious free time trying to write at a makeshift desk, which she constructed herself from an old door and some crates. But she didn't make much progress. She would later recall, contrary to what most people think, there's no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time. All this made Lee's New York experience stand in sharp contrast to Capote's with his successful writing career and circle of creative artist friends.
11:02 Lindsay Graham? One of those fellow artists was a Broadway musical composer named Michael Brown, another southern transplant. When Lee first arrived in New York, Capote had asked Brown to show her around and help her settle in. The two of them became fast friends. Lee began to share her writing with Brown and his wife Joy, and she soon became a regular at their townhouse on East 50th Street, bringing along the latest stories she'd been working on to read aloud to them. And the couple was always impressed with what they heard. So in November of 1956, Michael Brown set Lee up with a literary agent he knew. After reading a batch of Lee's short stories, the agent told her she had real talent, but short stories were tough to sell. Instead, the agent advised her to try writing a novel.
11:46 Lindsay Graham? But with Lee's busy airline job, she was hard pressed to find the time. The next month, the Browns insisted that Lee stay at their house so she wouldn't be alone during the holidays. And at Christmas, they would present her with a gift that would change Lee's life forever.
12:05 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's Christmas morning in 1956. Snow is coating the ground outside your 19th-century townhouse in New York. You're a father of two eager toddlers who've been nagging you for days to let them open the carefully-wrapped presents under the tree in your living room.
12:22 Lindsay Graham? You wake up and groggily head downstairs to light a fire in the fireplace. One of your kids races past you up the stairs to awaken your sleeping house guest, your good friend Nell Lee. A few minutes later, Nell comes down the stairs.
12:36 Speaker 03 Merry Christmas, Nell. Did you get some sleep?
12:40 Speaker 01 Yes, I was comfortable as always. This townhouse feels like home.
12:46 Lindsay Graham? You give the children a nod, and they begin to frantically unwrap their presents. Nell leans back on the sofa, enjoying the chaos. Then she points to two gifts tucked under the tree.
12:56 Speaker 01 Don't let the kids have all the fun. Why don't you see what treasures I scrounged up for you two?
13:03 Lindsay Graham? Nell smiles as you and your wife open your gifts. A portrait of a humorist for you and a collection of writing for your wife. But as the last gifts are opened, you notice a hint of disappointment spread across Nell's face. You smile and point to the tree.
13:17 Speaker 03 We haven't forgotten you. Look.
13:20 Lindsay Graham? Nell finds an envelope tucked into the pine boughs. She looks confused as she reads what you've written inside.
13:27 Speaker 01 What does this mean?
13:30 Speaker 03 Just what it says. You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please.
13:35 Speaker 01 I don't understand. Is this a joke?
13:39 Speaker 03 Far from it. We've had a good year. You know the whims of Broadway. It seems the crowds have appreciated my songs more than usual. We've been putting some of that money aside, and we think it's time we do something about you.
13:52 Speaker 01 What do you mean, "do something about me"?
13:55 Speaker 03 You're talented, Nell. And we believe in you. We just want to give you a shot to practice your craft, free from the burdens of everyday working life.
14:06 Speaker 01 Are you crazy? You don't have a year's salary to throw away. Who knows what could happen in that time? What if the children get sick?
14:16 Speaker 03 We'll be fine. But consider it a loan if you like. Just say you'll take it.
14:22 Speaker 01 Okay. I will. I don't know how to thank you. You're taking such a huge risk on me.
14:32 Speaker 03 Nonsense. It's not a risk. It's a sure thing.
14:37 Lindsay Graham? You look at Nell and know you've made the right choice. She already has a new glow, like your gift lit a match inside her. You can't wait to see what the next year will bring.
14:51 Lindsay Graham? After the Browns' generous gift in December 1956, Lee promised herself, "I would do my best not to fail them." She promptly quit her job at the airline and holed up in her apartment, telling a friend she wouldn't be leaving the house for the entire year. Lee called writing "the hardest thing in the world for me." Sometimes she spent six to 12 hours churning out just one page. Her focus on revisions made her a slow worker. In fact, she called herself "more of a rewriter than a writer." But with nothing to distract her, Lee was able to quicken the pace of her work. She'd spent seven years in New York with little to show for them, but in just two months, by the end of February 1957, she drafted a novel.
15:34 Lindsay Graham? The 250-page manuscript she turned in to her agent described a young woman named Jean Louise who returned to Alabama after spending some time living in New York. Her father Atticus was a lawyer, just like Lee's, and the story was centered on issues of race and racism in a small southern town, which bore a distinct resemblance to her hometown of Monroeville. After reading it, Lee's agent sent along that manuscript to a respected publishing house called J.B. Lippincott, where it landed on the desk of Tay Ho-Hoff, one of the company's few senior woman editors. Ho-Hoff saw potential in the draft, and in the summer of 1957, she brought Lee in for a meeting. Ho-Hoff told Lee that the draft needed work, but it had promise.
16:18 Lindsay Graham? Lee spent another few months revising on her own, and by October, the editors at J.B. Lippincott were sold. They signed a deal with Lee and gave her a few thousand dollars advance to get the manuscript into publishing shape. Ho-Hoff and Lee then spent the next six months working through revisions together. It was a slow and painstaking process. Later, Lee recalled getting so frustrated one night that she threw the pages she'd been working on out the window, but after Ho-Hoff scolded her over the phone, Lee ran out into the cold and collected the discarded pages from the dirty New York snow. In their revision process, Lee and Ho-Hoff decided the story needed a new perspective. They framed their revised draft through Jean Louise's eyes and set it in the Great Depression,
17:02 Lindsay Graham? when she was still a child who went by the nickname Scout. To populate Scout's hometown, Lee pulled from characters she herself had known during her childhood. There was the mysterious neighbor down the street, Boo Radley, whom the kids tried to coax out of his home; a loving black housekeeper, Calpurnia, who cared for Scout and her brother; a rambunctious best friend named Dill, who spent his summers in the house next door. And at the heart of the story was a trial, which Lee said was a composite of all the trials in the world, but set at Monroeville's courthouse. In the story, Scout's father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man named Tom Robinson, who'd been falsely accused of raping a white woman.
17:43 Lindsay Graham? Despite the prejudice of many of his white neighbors, Atticus told his children, "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." And when the jury chose to convict Robinson of the crime, the children learn a stark lesson about racial injustice. In their father's words, "In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins." As the manuscript continued to evolve, Lee retitled it Atticus, but by its third draft, she was calling it To Kill a Mockingbird. By the spring of 1959, Ho-Haw Thought Mockingbird was ready to be published. As Lee waited to receive galleys of the book, she got a call from her friend Truman Capote.
18:26 Lindsay Graham? Capote's editor at The New Yorker had given him a new assignment: to go to Kansas and write about a wheat farmer, his wife, and two kids who had all been brutally murdered. Capote told Lee he needed a research assistant, and Lee enthusiastically signed up. Capote said the trip would take just a few days, but their visit to this small town in Kansas to investigate a murder would change both of the writers' lives and their relationship forever.
18:52 Speaker 04 I'm Gemma Whelan, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of the original femme fatale, The Spy Who Was Mata Hari. A famous dancer turned World War I secret agent, accused of seducing Allied officers to uncover their plans. But was she a temptress or a scapegoat for French failures? Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Was Mata Hari, early and ad-free on Audible.
19:27 Speaker 05 For decades, two legendary brands fought for the hearts of American bikers: Indian Motorcycle and Harley-Davidson. The battle looked a lot like Coke versus Pepsi or Ford versus Chevy, but tastes changed and Indian didn't adapt fast enough. The icon all but died. Then came the con men, the dreamers, a string of spectacular failures that kept Indian in the grave, until one company finally got it right. This is the story of an improbable revival and the reignition of an old rivalry. Hey, I'm David Brown, the host of the podcast Business Wars, and every season we bring you the true stories behind the companies that shape our world. Indian's new owners are going all in, but an existential crisis looms. Can Indian and Harley recruit enough younger writers to survive?
20:10 Speaker 05 Make sure to follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
20:27 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's late December of 1959. You're at home in your small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. And tonight, you and your husband are hosting two new guests who recently arrived in town, all the way from New York City. Right away, they struck you as an odd pair. The man instantly dominates the conversation, speaking in long monologues and rattling on about his famous friends. But the woman is more reserved, polite, with an underlying warmth. When she offers to help you in the kitchen, you're glad to have an excuse to step away from the others.
21:01 Speaker 01 Hmm, it smells great in here. How can I help? Why don't you put some condiments in those bowls over there? I'll check on the potatoes. It's a wonder how many ways you can cook a potato. And all of them are delicious. Back home, we always love baked potato soup. Really? Potato soup doesn't strike me as a New York special. Oh, I'm not from New York. Just a recent transplant. I spent my life in Alabama, a little town called Monroeville. Hmm, a southern girl. That's right. I find my mind is never far from there. It's all I can seem to write about, and I still go back from time to time. How about you? Have you always lived in Holcomb?
21:44 Speaker 01 I was born in Selden and went to school in Kansas City. Spent a year in Topeka when Cliff was in law school, but I've always lived in Kansas. And you're a local reporter, is that right?
21:57 Lindsay Graham? You're surprised. You know she and her friend are in town to dig into a legal case. They must know that your husband is the victim's lawyer. But just now, when you mentioned his law practice, she didn't take it as a chance to dig. Instead, she seems genuinely interested in you.
22:14 Speaker 01 Yes, I write a daily column for The Telegram. I took a few years off after having my first three kids, but it's great to be back on the job. You said you're a writer, too? Well, I'm trying to be. I finally pulled enough together for a book, but it's been excruciating. I don't know how you're able to write every day. Doesn't your brain ever draw a blank?
22:42 Lindsay Graham? You laugh, opening the oven to check on the duck roasting.
22:46 Speaker 01 I'm lucky to have an editor who lets me write whatever I please. Some days I moan about the trials of raising a family, and others, I become an amateur comic. It sounds fun. Say, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but I think that bird needs a little longer in the oven.
23:06 Lindsay Graham? You smile. It's nice to have another woman around to lessen the load, and a working woman no less a fellow writer. By the time you return to the table to rejoin the group, you can't believe the two of you just met, because it feels like you've known her forever.
23:24 Lindsay Graham? When Truman Capote arrived in Kansas, he couldn't have looked more out of place, dressed in a sheepskin coat, long scarf, and moccasins. Lee later recalled, "Those people had never seen anyone like Truman. He was like someone coming off the moon." His ego and his penchant for name dropping rubbed people the wrong way. Lee, on the other hand, was approachable. She quickly began earning the trust of wives around town, like Dolores Hope, whose husband was the lawyer for the victim's family, and Marie Dewey, who was married to the detective appointed to the case, Agent Alvin Dewey. Soon, Agent Dewey warmed to Lee too. He recalled, "She had a down-home style, a friendly smile, and a knack for saying the right things.
24:07 Lindsay Graham? If Capote came on as something of a shocker, she was there to absorb the shock." Lee was also careful and diligent in her reporting, and her work became crucial as Capote decided to turn his New Yorker article into a full-length book. She organized her observations into categories, and drew timelines and diagrams to piece the story together. To help Capote recall a particular interview, she often wrote a little scene describing its setting. And she learned as many personal details about the family that had been killed as she could, even befriending local church ladies who gossiped with her. The details she gleaned, which she shared with Capote, eventually helped him paint a rich portrait of each character in the book he would call "In Cold Blood."
24:53 Lindsay Graham? Back in New York, in March of 1960, Mockingbird was almost ready to hit shelves when Lee learned that Reader's Digest and the Literary Guild had selected it as the Book of the Month to offer their subscribers. This meant it would instantly be promoted to thousands of people. Lee was so overjoyed at the Literary Guild's rave review that she got a jaywalking ticket, racing downtown to her agent's office to celebrate. Then in July of 1960, Mockingbird was finally published and quickly hit the New York Times and Chicago Tribune top 10 bestseller lists. The New York Times review called Lee "a fresh writer with something significant to say." Then, within just six months of Mockingbird's publication, Lee had signed a deal with a
25:35 Lindsay Graham? Hollywood production company to turn it into a movie. And then, after 41 weeks on the bestseller list, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing. Lee was thrilled, but she wrote to a friend, "The Pulitzer is one thing; the approval of my own people is the only literary reward I covet." As soon as she got word of the award, she phoned her sister Alice, hoping to take the pulse of reactions in Monroeville. But she needn't have worried. The county paver summed up the positive reaction. "What happens in a small southern town when citizens learn that one of its natives has just become a Pulitzer Prize winner? Well, the word travels fast. Telephones ring, bulletins go on the radio, people jump in their automobiles and travel to the next block to tell their neighbors."
26:20 Lindsay Graham? There was no question. Monroeville and people who love Lee are proud of her and her work. Requests for interviews and letters from fans poured into Lee's mailbox. Truman Capote wrote to friends, "Poor thing, she says she gave up trying to answer her fan mail when she received 62 letters in one day." But though Capote thrived in the spotlight, Lee felt overwhelmed by the sudden rush of attention. She didn't like talking to the press and kept her responses curt. To field requests and manage her business affairs, Lee increasingly turned to her sister Alice. Alice Lee was 15 years older than now, and as a trained lawyer, she became her sister's de facto advisor and manager.
27:01 Lindsay Graham? It was Alice who, at the end of 1963, crunched the numbers on her sister's finances to find that much of Lee's earnings would have to go toward tax payments. Both sisters were shocked. Suddenly, Lee felt she was suffering from the consequences of success: the fame, the publicity demands, the taxes, but not enjoying the fruits of it. She told the Associated Press, "Success has had a very bad effect on me. I'm running just as scared as before." What's more, while Mockingbird was widely praised, its message of racial injustice sparked controversy. At the time of publication, the country was embroiled in the largest civil rights movement in U.S. history. That year, 1960, had seen the famous lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina,
27:46 Lindsay Graham? and the forced integration of New Orleans elementary schools. And To Kill a Mockingbird explored race relations in the American South head-on. Lee painted a harsh picture of racial injustice, and the novel seemed to instruct white Southerners to reject racist views. But the book's message had its enemies. Just days after Mockingbird was awarded Paperback of the Year in 1962, Alabama Governor George Wallace took to the state Capitol steps and declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." By 1964, two years after the publication of Mockingbird, Lee had only written a few more short articles.
28:28 Lindsay Graham? But she assured a reporter that she was still hard at work on her next novel. She told him, "I would like to be the chronicler of something I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class, Southern life." In fact, Lee said she hoped to become "the Jane Austen of South Alabama." But Lee was struggling under the weight of the public's expectations. All anyone wanted to know was when her next novel would come out and what it would be about. Lee felt pressure to write something that could live up to the success of Mockingbird, telling her cousin, "I haven't anywhere to go but down." In the meantime, Mockingbird continued to spark debates about race. In 1966, a school board in Richmond, Virginia, voted to ban the book from the curriculum, calling it immoral.
29:12 Lindsay Graham? Instantly, community members filled the op-ed pages of the local newspaper to debate the ban. One librarian was supportive, declaring, "It's gratifying to know that the Hanover County School Board has taken a firm stand against slummy books." But another reader countered, "To ban a book is to plant the seeds of narrow-mindedness." Eventually, the school board backtracked, and the book was allowed back onto the shelves. But it was hardly the last time Lee would encounter resistance to her book's message of racial justice.
29:45 Lindsay Graham? In January 1966, as Nell Lee struggled to handle her success, Truman Capote finally published his book, In Cold Blood. It was hailed as a major journalistic feat, the first-ever nonfiction novel. The New York Times praised the immense courage it must have taken to follow the story through and write it down, and called the book "reportage in a depth we have not seen before." But when Nell Lee opened her copy of the book, she was shocked by what she found. The only credit for her contributions was in the form of a dedication, written to both her and Capote's romantic partner. Lee and Capote's friendship had been strained for some time. Capote's cousin attested that Capote was envious of Lee's Pulitzer win, and even resented her for it.
30:30 Lindsay Graham? He'd also been increasingly using drugs and alcohol to numb the stress that came with his work. When Capote hosted a black-and-white masked ball at the Plaza Hotel that autumn, he chose to invite over 500 friends, but his oldest, Nell Lee, would not attend. By 1977, over a decade after the In Cold Blood snub, Harper Lee had still not given up her dream of writing another novel. And one day, she opened up the newspaper and saw a story that jumped off the page. It was a strange case involving a series of murders about 100 miles from Monroeville in Alexander City, Alabama. She saw an opportunity to write her own version of In Cold Blood. So, like she had for Capote a decade before,
31:13 Lindsay Graham? she packed up her life and went to live in Alexander City, committed to writing a true crime novel of her own. Lee was now in her 50s, but her mind for reporting was as sharp as it had been nearly two decades before in Kansas. She collected a paper trail of records and traveled from county to county, interviewing anyone with a stake in the story. She even came up with a title for her new book, The Reverend. But when she returned to New York and sat down to write, nothing came. She struggled to structure the story and mulled over the ethical questions of covering true crime. She suffered under the pressure of what she called her neck being breathed on to churn out as high quality a book as Mockingbird. Rumors swirled about her progress, but years passed with no publication and no public
31:58 Lindsay Graham? statement from Lee. By Mockingbird's 30th anniversary in 1990, a newspaper reporter wrote that Lee had vanished from the literary landscape, becoming nearly as enigmatic as Boo Radley, her novel's forbidding recluse. Lee was fading away, and not just from public view. One of her key sources for The Reverend said it was his impression that Lee was fighting a battle between the book and a bottle of scotch, and the scotch was winning. Her sister Alice, too, had expressed concerns about Nell's drinking habits throughout her life. Lee's personal circle was also shrinking. Her father and brother had died decades before. By the early 1980s, her editor, Tay Ho-Hoff, had also passed away. In 1984, Capote died, too.
32:43 Lindsay Graham? Despite their disagreements over In Cold Blood, it was another blow for Lee, who still considered Capote a close friend. Meanwhile, Lee's masterpiece, Mockingbird, continued to soar to new heights. It was voted best novel of the century by a Library Journal poll in 1998, and it had become a classic of American literature. But the years of trying to replicate her success had come with a heavy cost.
33:13 Lindsay Graham? By 1779, Benedict Arnold had sacrificed more for the revolution than almost any other man in America. One of George Washington's most effective commanders, he had nearly lost a leg in the Second Battle of Saratoga. But in return, Arnold believed he had been humiliated by Congress and cheated of his glory by lesser men, so he decided to make them pay. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of the podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history: presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, Benedict Arnold turns his back on his comrades in the Continental Army and secretly defects to the British. With the help of his wife, he plots to hand over the most important colonial fortress to the enemy and doom the
33:58 Lindsay Graham? revolution he once served. Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American Scandal early and ad-free right now. Join Audible on the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
34:14 Speaker 06 You stepped out for your morning jog, except it's not your usual morning jog. You started listening to an epic sci-fi book on Audible. Thirty chapters later, you've accidentally run a half marathon. You've lost track of how far you've run, somewhere just past the city limits. You can't stop. You have to find out what happens next. Then it's over. The universe seems bigger. You feel different. You feel like you have no idea where you are. Audible. Stories that speak to you.
34:50 Lindsay Graham? In June of 2007, Harper Lee failed to show up for a lunch date with some friends in New York. Later, they found her lying on the floor in her apartment, having suffered a severe stroke. Lee recovered, but the stroke left her in a wheelchair and struggling with her vision and hearing. Lee and her sister Alice decided to move back to Monroeville for good. Lee had been splitting her time between New York and Alabama for years. Even at the height of Mockingbird's press tour, she'd been shuffling back and forth to visit her father as his health declined. Local residents might see her shopping at the Dollar General, feeding ducks by the pond, or sipping sweet tea at David's Catfish House with her sister. Though Lee was known to reject interview requests with an emphatic "hell no",
35:34 Lindsay Graham? she was friendly to her neighbors. But in Monroeville, as elsewhere, she wanted little to do with Mockingbird's fame. She used to sign copies of the book for local bookstores to sell, until she realized customers were turning around and reselling them at a huge markup. But Lee and her sister Alice had grown close to one Chicago Tribune reporter named Maria Mills. They even helped her rent a house near theirs and granted her permission to write a book about their lives. Around this time, Alice Lee had also been training a young lawyer, Tonia B. Carter, to join her practice. Carter was married to Truman Capote's cousin and had grown close to the family since the sisters moved back to Alabama. But soon, Carter's increasing influence began to draw attention.
36:22 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's the fall of 2013. You're a nurse, working at an assisted living residence in Monroeville. You're finishing up your typical morning rounds: changing bedding, delivering food to residents. You stop off in the staff room for a cup of coffee when another one of the nurses approaches you with a hushed talk.
36:41 Speaker 01 Have you heard what's going on with Ms. Lee? Now, Lee? Hmm, what do you mean? I've been working her rotation for years now, but recently, things have been changing. How so? Well, you know Ms. Lee gets so bored here, she always loves having visitors. That kind old man who owns Ratley's Fountain Grill used to swing by here every Thursday to see her. Oh, yeah. Didn't he always bring Ms. Lee her favorite potato soup? That's right. Well, the other day, I heard him in a spat with someone at the front desk. They were telling him he couldn't visit. Oh, really? What happened? Apparently, Ms. Lee's now got a list of pre-approved visitors. No one else is allowed in.
37:27 Lindsay Graham? You're shocked. You put down your coffee cup.
37:30 Speaker 01 Do you know where the list came from? Apparently, her lawyer, that woman she spends so much time with, Ms. Carter, they're awfully close. I can't imagine Ms. Carter would write a list without Ms. Lee's permission. I know. People say she's like family to Ms. Lee and her sister Alice.
37:47 Lindsay Graham? You lower your voice.
37:49 Speaker 01 That reminds me. I overheard some folks at the Courthouse Cafe gossiping the other day. Apparently, Ms. Lee started suing people all around town. Like the local museum. They've been selling Mockingbird merch for years. But just recently, she took them to court over it for the first time. Says it's violating her trademark. That's what I heard too. I don't understand the sudden change.
38:19 Lindsay Graham? You glance up at the clock. You've got to get on with your rounds before lunchtime. You put your coffee cup in the sink.
38:27 Speaker 01 Ah, I've got to go, but I will say this. My family's lived here for generations. The Lees have always been friendly. I sure hope that isn't changing. Me too. I'd hate to think Ms. Lee has turned her back on the town that helped make her famous. It just isn't right.
38:47 Lindsay Graham? You leave the staff room, unsure of what to think about all this. But as a nurse, you're determined to see that Ms. Lee continues to get the best care possible.
39:00 Lindsay Graham? In the early 2010s, Tonya Carter filed a series of lawsuits on behalf of her client, Harper Lee. There was one against Lee's literary agent. There was another against a local museum for selling unauthorized Mockingbird merchandise. Carter's firm also released a statement saying that Lee had never given the Chicago Tribune reporter, Maria Mills, permission to write about her. But the biggest surprise was yet to come. According to Carter, she'd been sorting through Lee's papers in her office one day when she'd come across a manuscript she'd never seen before. It was for a story called "Go Set a Watchman." The manuscript was the same one that editor Tay Ho-Ho first read back in the 1950s.
39:43 Lindsay Graham? Over half a century after Mockingbird was published, the newly-found manuscript was presented to the publishers at Harper Collins. And in July of 2015, they put it to print, packaging it to the public as a quasi-sequel to Lee's classic novel. "Go Set a Watchman" featured some of the same characters readers had grown to love in Mockingbird, but deviated from Lee's beloved classic in significant ways. Instead of telling the story through the eyes of young Scout, it followed an adult version of Scout, Jean Louise, who was disillusioned with her father Atticus and the South as a whole. Rather than Mockingbird's Atticus, a triumphant lawyer fighting for racial justice, "Go Set
40:23 Lindsay Graham? a Watchman" featured an old and flawed man who espoused openly racist views, attended a Klan meeting, and opposed the Supreme Court's ruling on desegregation. If Mockingbird's lesson had been that all people, regardless of race, were worthy of respect, Watchman seemed to say that not everyone believed in that ideal of equality. In the time since Mockingbird's first publication, it had become part of the American literary canon, but also the subject of increasing criticism. Many modern readers recoiled at its use of racial slurs. Some argued the book lacked three-dimensional black characters and that its portrayal of racism was simplistic and lacking nuance. Others argued that it was a paternalistic narrative of a great white lawyer trying to
41:07 Lindsay Graham? save a black man, and that it reduced racism to an individual-level problem rather than a systemic one. With Watchman's publication, these questions roared to the forefront of literary conversation. As a New York Times reviewer reflected, "One of the emotional through-lines in both Mockingbird and Watchman is a plea for empathy. The difference is that Mockingbird suggested that we should have compassion for outsiders like Boo and Tom Robinson, while Watchman asks us to have understanding for a bigot named Atticus." What's more, some said Lee may not have wanted this unedited draft released to the world. Her Monroeville neighbor said she hadn't been well since her stroke, and some questioned whether she had been in sound enough mental condition to sign off on publication.
41:51 Lindsay Graham? But others close to Lee said she was happy that the original draft was out in the world, and that she'd finally published that elusive second book.
42:03 Lindsay Graham? One year after Ghost City Watchman's publication in February of 2016, Nell Harper Lee died in her bed at her assisted living home in Monroeville. A statement released by her publisher said, "She lived her life the way she wanted to, in private, surrounded by books and the people who loved her." But her death left fans with a perplexing challenge: how to sift through the last 50 years of Lee's life when she seemed to retreat from the boldness of the book that defined her career? In many ways Harper Lee was full of contradictions: a loner from Alabama who spent much of her life in the big city, an acclaimed author who hardly ever published, a polite southern woman who wasn't afraid to confront racial injustice, a giant of American literature
42:47 Lindsay Graham? who struggled for years to find her voice and then at the height of her success, fell silent. From Wondery, this is the sixth episode of Great American Authors for American History Tellers. In our next series, in 1900, a massive storm began churning through the Gulf of Mexico, headed toward Galveston, Texas. But officials in Washington dismissed urgent warnings from Cuban forecasters who insisted it would become a deadly hurricane. So as the prosperous island city carried on unaware, its leaders were left with a fateful choice: sound the alarm and risk panic, or trust the official forecasts and hope the storm would turn?
43:32 Lindsay Graham? If you'd like to learn more about Harper Lee, we recommend Mockingbird, A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields, and Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Kep. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsay Graham, for Airship. Audio editing by Christian Paraga, sound design by Derek Behrens, music by Lindsey Graham, voice acting by Joe Hernandez Colsky and Cat Peoples. This episode is written by Julia Press, edited by Dorian Marina, produced by Alita Rosansky. Our production coordinator is Desi Blalock, managing producer Matt Gant, senior producer Andy Herman, and executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louie for Wondery.
44:16 Lindsay Graham? American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you. So, thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.
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